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Source: Second French Church Attacker Was Known to Police

Thursday, July 28, 2016 3:40 am | < 1 Minute Read
PARIS (Reuters) —
Police and rescue workers stand at the scene after two assailants had taken five people hostage in the church at Saint-Etienne-du -Rouvray near Rouen in Normandy, France, July 26, 2016. Two attackers killed a priest with a blade and seriously wounded another hostage in a church in northern France on Tuesday before being shot dead by French police. REUTERS/Steve BonetATTENTION EDITORS FRENCH LAW REQUIRES THAT VEHICLE REGISTRATION PLATES ARE MASKED IN PUBLICATIONS
Police and rescue workers stand at the scene of the attack in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen in Normandy, France, Tuesday. (Reuters/Steve Bonet)

Police have identified the second attacker who attacked a church in northern France on Tuesday as a 19-year-old known to security services as suspected of having Islamist terror links, sources said on Thursday.

Police identified the man as Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean from a town in eastern France on the border with Germany, a judicial source told Reuters.

Security services had in June opened a special file on Petitjean for becoming radicalized, a police source said separately. The government has said there are about 10,500 such people in France.

Petitjean and an already identified accomplice, Adel Kermiche, took hostages at a church in Normandy on Tuesday before killing an elderly priest.

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